Make an altar for the people you know who have died this past year.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Try this at home: Make an altar for the people you know who died this past year. Because of all the covid deaths during the last year, no doubt a number of you will get some peace from making an altar and doing a ritual. Every year at this time, the are two holidays from two different cultures, the Mexican Day of the Dead and the Irish Samhain, which we now call Halloween. I have always thought it was fascinating that these two different cultures chose the same day of the year to celebrate this tradition. Two cultures who had no ancient history together. The spiritual traditions behind these holidays is simple, yet powerful. We set up a table on which we place photos and things that remind us of those people we knew who died this year, what we appreciated about them and why they were important in our life. In the Mexican tradition, a plate of their favorite food is placed on the table. In the Irish tradition it is called the dumb supper, where a plate of food is placed on the same table where the family is having dinner. In both traditions, stories are told about those people, and if they had favorite songs or music, that is sung or played. Both traditions offer the loved one a last meal of their favorite food and drink and the remembrance of their friends and family wishing them well on their journey into the next world. Your altar can include a pet that died this year. Your altar can also include some person who you did not know personally, but whose work influenced you. I have seen altars for Dr. Seuss, Selena, and the Twin Towers of 9/11. I remember when some of my favorite authors like Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Buckland died. That makes sense because our favorite authors, artists, actors, musicians, athletes and other cultural stars were a part of our life through their work and our favorites often are significant influences on us. You can also make an altar for someone who died a long time ago, who you would like to do a memorial for. I know that this is a powerful simple ritual we can do to honor those we knew. Doing so provides us a powerful life lesson about what and who we really value. You can find more special offers on my website https://www.magicalawakenings.com

Feeling Our Seasons Turning

 

Feeling Our Seasons Turning

When the leaves turn, it is always a beautiful sight, different colors painting the scenes all around us until they finally let go and drop to reveal the skeleton of the tree for the winter months. As we watch the seasons turn, we reflect on the progress of our lives so far. We planted seeds in the spring and we harvested in fall. We set new goals and achieved them. Traditionally, the name of the full moon in October, which is this Wednesday, is the Hunter's Moon or Blood Moon. This is the time of year when we have hunting season. Our ancestors have done this for millennia so that they would have meat for the winter. Same way they would have cut firewood for the winter. There was nothing spooky about this, simply taking care of our needs for survival. What are you hunting for under the energy of this full moon? Elk? Deer? A new job? A new relationship? A new activity for fun and fitness? A new place to live? What will this Hunter's Moon illuminate for you? Of course, not all of us are hunters in that sense, but we all do hunt for various goals or targets that we have set for ourselves. This time of year brings those thoughts back to mind, the thoughts of big changes we would like to make, and the turning leaves remind us of the turns we have coming up. What do we need to do to get ready for our changes? Research new opportunities? Acquire new skills? Learn new techniques? Discover new ideas? I always feel a very reflective spirit at this time of year. Remembering our dead at Halloween/Samhain/Day of the Dead, expressing gratitude at Thanksgiving, celebrating our connections with spirit and the people in our lives with parties during Christmas/Winter Solstice. It is this time of reflection that is so rich for us. Amidst all these seasonal activities and the hustle of business, it is still very moving to savor the reflective spirit of our near past and future. What is your favorite part of feeling the seasons turn? Does the turning of fall awaken deeper passions in you? I know that it always does within me. I always love hearing from you, so if you feel like sending me a note, calling or coming to see me, please do! Have a wonderful day!

The Most Spiritual Season

 

The Most Spiritual Season

I have always felt that fall to the beginning of winter is the most spiritual season of the year. All of our most emotionally potent holidays fall in this quadrant of the year. Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas/Yule and New Year's always pack a punch. The best parties with family and friends and people we care about visiting or spending some time with. Renewing old acquaintances and making new friends. This is the time of year we celebrate our harvests, we remember our dead, we begin new semesters of school, new seasons of work, a time to express gratitude, then celebrate the return of the light both in the form of the Sun and of Christ, then the new year. What a powerful set of subjects and feelings to focus on! Fall always brings the best new books from publishers and the best new movies from the film industry. Fall brings new seasons of shows from performing arts groups, orchestras and theaters. New seasons of shows on TV or streaming services. A lot of the best new things in many respects, come out in fall when you think of all the things I have mentioned. During this harvest season it is worth remembering that what we are harvesting is what we planted. As we express gratitude, this is also an opportunity to see what changes need to be made with what we did not harvest so that we can do better next time. We do that as we make plans for parties. These are times when you give consideration as to who you want to invite. Who are the people who are good influences, good energies, helpful people in our lives? Which people do we want to cut cords with? Reinforcing some ties and cutting others reflects our feelings about the holiday parties. These are not superficial choices. It is natural that as we evolve, our friends evolve. And as our circle of friends evolves, our social events and parties evolve. People we meet at these events might become more of a part of our lives in the coming year. Endings and beginnings are significant at this time of year. How spiritually guided do we feel with the way our lives are going now? If we have not thought about it before, now is the perfect time. To give it thought in preparation for future actions. It is a spiritual season for spiritual thoughts. I enjoy the whole feel of it with the turning colors, orchestral music, home cooking that makes the air fragrant, fireplaces, and all those other things that speak to us of love, comfort, home, friends, family and the time to reflect on our past, present and future. I always love hearing from you, so if you feel like sending me a note, calling or coming to see me, please do! Have a wonderful day!

Keeping Our Balance

 

Keeping Our Balance

A constant challenge for all of us is to keep balance in our lives and it is easy to lose our way at times, so take the time at this time of year to consider ways to do that. An example is knowing how to schedule work so that we still have time left to nurture our relationships with family and friends plus have time and energy for hobbies, sports or activities that we enjoy. Joy is a critical ingredient in a good life, and we find it dancing on balance of the scales. Scales are an easy thing for us to visualize and keeping that visual in mind, we think about whether we should accept or decline more work right now so that we have time for these other important parts of our life. This image is the Justice card from the Light Seer's Tarot. Certainly keeping balance can be more difficult for some people if you are in a job that requires you to be available for emergency calls or shifts. Still, we all have time to make some choices in life and do the best we can. In my life and practice, I am always conscious of devoting enough time to do my best work, and some time for going to the gym, laundry, shopping and visiting with friends. What is different now than in the past is that I set up my business to be available for clients first, and second to do other things. When I worked for corporations, we kept office hours, then took care of personal things after those hours. So now is the reverse, not based around keeping the same hours every day. I work when people need me to work. Usually people come to me, but in some cases I go to them. Because over the years many clients have requested evening or weekend appointments because of their schedules, I gladly do this for them because it is all the same to me if I go to the gym in the afternoon and see clients in the evening, or workout on the weekdays in order to see clients on weekends. I feel good about arranging things that way, and I feel a good overall flow of energies in my life. Changing to a new mindset can be challenging when we are making changes, but when we create a new model, it flows smoother. Balance causes one person to choose to work from a home office while another chooses to have an office away from the home. We each have to find the ways that work best for us. I like how the artist shows how we are balancing the light and dark aspects of life. Justice is about balance. When something is wrong, we make corrections to make it right again. Personally, we are bringing balance back into our life when we settle old debts, clear up old business and bring resolution to conflicts in our life. That also helps us keep our balance in life. Light and dark is the major theme and turning point in the year that we are celebrating at the Fall Equinox. On this day, we have an equal amount of light and dark in the day. After this day, the scale tips and we get more darkness in our days until Yule, the longest night of the year, when the light returns. Then on the Spring Equinox, there is a day of balance between light & dark again, this time with the scales tipping toward more light in our days until we reach the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. Dark is not a negative connotation here. This part of the year, when it is cold and dark, is the time when we bring light into our life by putting on the most heartfelt celebrations of the year, when we bring light into the dark season by inviting family and friends over to share celebrations with us. There are no more powerful, emotionally charged holidays in our year than Halloween/Samhain/Day of the Dead, Thanksgiving, Christmas/Yule/Winter Solstice, and New Year's Eve. There is a richness in the dark time of the year in another way. We all need time to study and practice subjects or activities we want to learn, reflect on our past experiences and draw the wisdom from them, and create new visions and align ourselves with the people who will be important to us in our next phase of life. By having this dark time to study and reflect, we are better prepared to take on the next level of challenges in our life. So feel how the energies need to be balanced, and then decide what actions you will take to do that. These holiday celebrations will also reveal the people we want to be more aligned with in the coming seasons. I always love hearing from you, so if you feel like sending me a note, calling or coming to see me, please do! Have a wonderful day!

Creative Destruction

 

Creative Destruction

An amazing development in our society right now is the fact that more people are creating their own businesses right now than at any time in the last 40 years. Covid and its disruptions have stimulated this giant wave of change. During the last 18 months, all of us have had to do something different because of this epidemic. When people's regular way of doing business was stopped, we were prompted to do things differently to keep on going. For many, that meant doing business remotely from home, rather than commuting to their office and meeting with people in person. For others, their business was closed, so they had to think about what other work would suit them. And for others, there was the inspiration to start their own business. So now, even though many masking restrictions have been lifted and more people are vaccinated, the jolt many felt from having their business slow down has prompted actions to create a business in a way that gives a person more control over how their life will go. After all, two things that all business owners get simply from being their own boss is the ability to control their own schedule and their own cash flow. Plus the joy of not having to ask permission of anyone else if they want to change something. The Tower cards from the tarot pictured above are great awakeners that speak to this very fact. Tower is one of those cards, like Death, that people new to the imagery and metaphors of tarot, are considered scary cards. A closer consideration of them however, speaks to hope arising from destruction. The card on the left is the more typical design, showing a tower struck by lightning, is from the Elemental Wisdom Tarot. The one on the right is from the Old Path Tarot shows a profile of a person. In both cases, the symbolism is that the old needs to be torn down to rebuild. Metaphorically, just like in developing a property, sometimes we need to tear down an old building in order to replace it with a new building. The second tower image indicates that we may need to change ourselves in order to create a better future. Creating a new business is one way to rebuild. For others, creating more work/life balance is critical to stability. Notice that no matter the differences in artist drawings, lightning always appears in the card. Lightning in the image is all about sudden change. One aspect of sudden change can be losing a job or career. Another is a divorce or separation. So an important lesson to draw is what did we learn from this experience and how will we rebuild? This can be a positive experience in the long run. Many times, after losing one job, a person rebounds and finds a better one. How many people after a divorce find themselves in a better relationship later? Enlightenment? We all experience it, but maybe we just did not think of that before. Lightning illuminates the landscape perfectly for a split second, and even though it goes away quickly, the image stays in our mind like a photo. How else do we get enlightened? Every time we learn something new, and we find ourselves saying "I never thought of it that way before" lightning goes off in our head with that new thought and now when the subject comes up, our mind summons that last insight we had first. Enlightenment takes us up to higher levels of knowing and appreciation. Each person creating their own new business is thinking of how they can do things better. Similarly, after leaving a previous relationship, we look at doing the next one better. After all, life is a constant learning experience and in our life journey, we want things to keep getting better, and so we take different actions based on what we have learned. So I often see the Tower, rather than as a negative event, rather as an opportunity to rebound after clear thinking and perspective and then working with our spirit guides to keep our eyes and ears open for signs to guide us. As many of you know, I have had several careers in this lifetime, and with each of those changes, I went through these periods of learning, rethinking and checking out opportunities to begin the next phase of evolution. Each stage prepares us for what is next. Every step to creating our next business or relationship is driven by our vision of how to do it better this time. Creative destruction is a term that has been used by business to refer to taking businesses apart to keep only the best parts and then rebuild with better methods. So out of all the craziness of covid, a new era of entrepreneurship is being born. That is very positive and empowering. Owning your own business is very empowering and consciousness raising, no matter what kind of business you have. There is an aliveness in taking the risk of starting your own business and building it up. It is both challenging and invigorating. So think of your Tower experiences in life as powerful moments of change that happen swiftly. Another aspect of lightning. Quickness. I always love hearing from you, so if you feel like sending me a note, calling or coming to see me, please do! Have a wonderful day! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back to School

 

Back to School

It is getting to be back to school time for school age kids, one of the sure signs of fall. Back to school is not only for kids. In fact, curiosity is what drives most of us to learn. When we want to learn more about any subject that catches our fancy, we find a way to teach ourselves, read a book, look up videos on the topic or find a teacher we can work with live and in person. It all comes down to desire. Inspiration that we get from something that made an impression on us left us thirsting for more and we seek to quench that thirst. Of course, as we all travel our paths in life we change our minds about what our goals are and what is important to us. In changing course, there are always two factors. One is to connect with that gut feeling that this is what we really want to do or know about, and the other is that when we learn new things, we enjoy sharing about them with others. When we do that, it may change the nature of our relationships with people. The Hermit card in the tarot contains that image. After a time of study and practice, the hermit emerges from their alone time to share the light with others. The lantern is lit with our new knowledge and skill, and because we enjoy doing these things, we are finding better ways to operate, and getting more satisfying results and we enjoy sharing these things with others who are also interested in what we are interested in, that will most likely result in changes in the people we spend more time with. Earlier in my life journey, if you had asked me what I thought I would be doing in the future, I would have given you different answers. Back when I was in college earning my Writing/English degree, I fantasized about becoming a novelist. Instead, my whole career as a writer was built in the realm of non- fiction, business writing and journalism, and I am happy with that career because it led me to who I am now. As a professional writer, interviewing and writing about the work of healers, psychics, energy workers, shamans, musicians, artists and others, I found myself wanting to learn more about these subjects. So I went to talks and workshops and studied with teachers. In time I did learn how to do different things, and then I wanted to do these things more than write about them. So I made that transition from writing about it to doing it. My career path changed from being a writer to being a healer. So our path is sometimes circuitous rather than linear. What are things that keep catching your attention? When spirit wants us to notice something, they always bring it to our attention three times. What could we look forward to going back to school on for our own enjoyment and enlightenment? We are always students and teachers in life. I always love hearing from you, so if you feel like sending me a note, calling or coming to see me, please do! Have a wonderful day!